Media Unlimited
How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives
By Todd Gitlin
Metropolitan Books
HC, 260 pgs. US$25/C$36.95
ISBN: 0-8050-4898-7
Exploring the quick fix
By Steven Martinovich
web posted March 11, 2002
Judging by his latest book, Todd Gitlin would appear to be a
man out of his time. Where Marshall McLuhan seemed to
celebrate the media culture, eventually becoming one of its
fixtures, Gitlin believes the ever-present roar of the torrent
drowns out who and what we really are. It turns us into little
more than image tourists and consumers searching for the next fix
before the present one wears off.
Although himself a prominent member of that torrent, Gitlin's
Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds
Overwhelms Our Lives is a book length attack on those things
that have transpired to create a society in love with little more
than sensations. Not only do we consume those transitory
sensations, he bemoans at several points, we seek them out. We
implicitly vote for a lifestyle of sound and images.
"The dirty little secret is that ours is a civilization that revels in the
experience of speed. We share a yearning for the kinetic
sublime. Excepting the phobic among us, we revel in sensations
of bodily speed: the sound of engines revving, the feeling of
forward movement, the look of the earth passing beneath the
wheels, the sensations of the wind through our hair, the blast of
air...This is -- hush! -- fun," argues Gitlin.
Given Gitlin's self-proclaimed status as the voice of the Sixties
Generation, it shouldn't be surprising that he drags out the usual
suspects as being responsible for the river that engulfs us. Says
Gitlin, it is caused by a "fusion of economic expansion and
individual desire." In other words, the free market and choice
have conspired to create a disposable society that doesn't value
the considered and measured public broadcasters more than the
purveyors of instant satisfaction.
Referencing German sociologist Georg Simmel, Gitlin argues that
the money economy is among the factors that creates
"impersonal social relations." Not surprisingly, Gitlin dates a
desire for disposable feelings to the same time that capitalism
began its ascent as a philosophy. "It seems that, in much of the
West in the seventieth century and accelerating thereafter,
feelings became associated ever more with the sense of the
internal, subjective life set apart from the external world," he
states at one point.
It's a compelling argument if you choose to ignore the role that
Gitlin's generation played in the fostering of subjectivism and the
fact that the desire for more speed - and by extension, a desire
for faster access to information - has always been a facet of
human behavior, the later point Gitlin readily admits to.
By failing to address the first point, Gitlin's effort is a wasted one.
It was his generation and his activism that weakened much of
traditional institutions that promoted social cohesion and
community building. What we used to look to as community has
now been replaced by the shared experience of watching what
Rush Limbaugh once referred to as "the endless parade of
human debris" that's featured on Jerry Springer or Jenny Jones.
Given that exploring the effect his own generation had on our
culture is one of those exercises that that would have raised
uncomfortable questions and even more uncomfortable answers,
it's not surprising that Gitlin decided to place the blame on
society and the system that serves it. The free market, however,
is morally neutral when it comes to the tastes of its participants.
As long as the basic requirements are met -- there is a seller, a
buyer and a free exchange -- the system feeds the appetites of
those involved.
While Media Unlimited does offer insights into the torrent that
washes over us, even occasionally penetrating observations, his
decision or inability to probe how and why we consume the way
we do without stooping to blame the market and our desires
ultimately hobbles his effort. The next time Gitlin looks at his
television screen hopefully he'll see more than the sounds and
images being broadcast, he'll see his own reflection.
Steven Martinovich is a freelance writer in Sudbury, Ontario.
Enter Stage Right - http://www.enterstageright.com